Why are George A. Romero’s zombie sequels so effective? The performances are over-the-top and one-note, the music is dated and bad, they’re directed to showcase special effects rather than advance the story, and – really – they’re not terribly exciting or scary. Yet 1978’s Dawn of the Dead and 1985’s Day of the Dead remain great horror movies, two distinctive and very different films that showcase Romero’s peculiar gifts for social commentary and understanding human behavior.
Magnolia breaks through the self-aware emotional vacancy of the decade’s cool movies (both sterile and knowingly clever, epitomized by Quentin Tarantino) without losing its edge; it gets inside its characters’ minds and hearts with dazzling style. It is afraid of neither elaborate tracking shots nor a good, fairly won cry.
That Wesley Willis is no longer suffering is a good thing. But there’s a part of me that feels a little sick that Willis was mistreated by his “fans” – the people who bought his music (me included) and paid to see him – and exploited. He was, I fear, a circus-sideshow attraction.
When Smoke was released in 1995, it received generally good notices as an intriguing but slight art-house film. Critics noted the literary sensibility of novelist Paul Auster, but they didn’t appear to understand how the movie fit into his body of work.
It’s probably only a slight overstatement that Kronos Quartet has done more than anybody else to bring “classical” music to the rock world, by playing the music of Jimi Hendrix and Mr. Bungle but also by taking it seriously, and without sniggering.
Did they do it? Capturing the Friedmans is wonderfully rich, and of all the things in it, this is among the least rewarding lines of inquiry for me. The most obvious point of the film is that we cannot know the truth of the accusations, so why argue about it?
It probably sounds like faint praise to say The Quiet American is a good story well told, but it’s certainly not intended that way. I mean that the movie is a solid, unpretentious, straightforward, compelling narrative that is skillfully written, directed, designed, filmed, and acted. It won’t knock you over, but you can’t find much fault with it. Plus: The Hours
I just don’t get how normal, smart adults get turned into raving geeks by Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The Gits only released one album before singer Mia Zapata was killed, Frenching the Bully, but it’s quite amazing. The record is good – debuts are rarely great, and this has all the typical trappings – but it’s valuable as a document of how good Zapata was.
Eye of God is a great demonstration of the power of structure. The 1996 film written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson piles cliché upon cliché. And yet, the movie works.
